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Poudings a LA Reine

A French meat pudding made with béchamel, eggs, and a sauce of butter, sugar, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,531 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-methylbutanol, which smells malty, whiskey. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the meat balls

  1. Mix the chopped meat with béchamel and 2 egg yolks.

  2. When cold, form into balls.

  3. Dip balls in egg yolk, then in bread crumbs; repeat.

  4. Fry in boiling lard until golden.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the calf's feet until tender.

  2. Strain the boiled calf's feet through a fine sieve.

  3. Add beef marrow, candied orange peel, citron, currants, nutmeg, salt, egg yolks, egg whites, and soaked bread. Beat well.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made of melted butter, sugar, and white wine.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Meat + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  2. Bread + beeftop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Egg + breadtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Orange + curranttop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Meat + breadtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,919 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites bind the pudding mixture and help it set when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Coat the balls to form a crisp golden crust when fried.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and moisture to the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.
Béchamel sauce
Binds the chopped meat and keeps the balls moist inside.

The step that matters

Dip and coat the balls evenly. Egg yolk and bread crumbs must fully cover each ball, or the coating can break or absorb fat unevenly during frying, leaving bare spots that brown unevenly or fall apart.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, egg, bread, garlic, beef, orange):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  3. Grapebetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, egg, bread, garlic, beef, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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